Expedition teams

[Solvent_Golem]

So, I know I suggested something like this in the past... but I think I got the idea rather nailed down. Also, putting it under Enimies and NPCs for the sake that I don't know where else this would be housed.

Expedition teams. These are people you can higher, much in the same way as you can crew members for the Rail Jack, and have a range of skills you can evolve much like those crew members.

An Expedition team is made up of 6 individuals. These 6 will be selected by the player and gear they hold. For example laser miners, fishing spears, bait, trank guns, so on. the quality of this gear and the skill levels of the individual it is given too will determine how much resources you get at the end.

In total there are 7 stats.
Guard: Protects the group, gets battle resources, and the higher the skill, the less likely the expedition will need to ask for help.
HP: Determins the HP the individual has, a good start to determine  how many hits they need before going doing.
Mining: Determins how good they are at mining, and how much ores or gems they produce while on expedition.
Fishing: How good at fishing they are and how many fish they can catch.
Hunting: I think you get the idea.
Gathering: Gathers resources found on the surface of the planet, plants, fruits, so on.
Motivation: Not a stat you can upgrade, but shows hard they are willing to work. Giving an individual a day's rest between expeditions or paying extra can affect this.

Expeditions can only be launched to the open world areas of the game, and can be done from your ship. If the expedition needs help, they will send out an SOS and you would have an hour to respond. This will normally be a come in, stomp on enemies who are causing problems, revive a member or two if needed, let them get back at it. For further customization your clan's club house gets a new room to build up. This will unlock a new option called "Clan expeditions", acting as big targeted tasks where all partakers will take a cut of the reward. You will also get to resurch better gear, MREs, and otherwise for your expedition members to bring with them and potentially extend how long they can stay out.

First for the clans, I will explain the focused expeditions. These will change once a day, and the focus of this expedition changing with it. The return product to a player will be based apon how much what they sent had helped, how long they where deployed, and how many times the player arrived to the location to assist in defending the group in person. As an example, if there is a lack of defense, you could send a team of pure guards and still get rewards out of this expedition because the defense was needed. If you send a group of fishers to assist in a mining expedition, odds are you would be lucky to be handed a bag of dust.

Second, specialized gear is more so made to highly benefit your expeditions, extend how long they can be out at a time, and also prevent problems and reduce how often your attention is needed for these. These will act as upgrades to your team and further improve their abilities and increase how much they can produce. 


That is about it. The only other thing I can think of is being able to give them specialized robotic buddies like Moas or the like to help add to protection as secondary things, but I wouldn't be sure how to socket this in given how complex this could already become... the most I would say is I would try to have an expedition time be about 6 hours before big problems begin happening.

[Zakkhar]

Please no managerial survival stuff in Warframe. No city/base building.

[Solvent_Golem]

 

1 minute ago, Zakkhar said:

Please no managerial survival stuff in Warframe. No city/base building.

It is not meant to be, its meant to be an alternative way of resource gathering, think like the resource miners you can drop on a planet after you finished all the nodes. The tool upgrades and group expeditions that would be opened up in clans is an improved way to get a selected resource in that day. The "Modivation" stat is just meant to exist to prevent teams from being spammed to the surface on repeat, much like how the resource miners have HP things attached to them that need to be "repaired" before being redeployed... unless you want to risk it.

[Zakkhar]

26 minutes ago, Solvent_Golem said:

It is not meant to be, its meant to be an alternative way of resource gathering, think like the resource miners you can drop on a planet after you finished all the nodes.

So, slavery, instead of machines? Interesting.

Edited June 25 by Zakkhar

[Solvent_Golem]

On 2024-06-24 at 11:09 PM, Zakkhar said:

So, slavery, instead of machines? Interesting.

In so many words, yes. Now in game I would expect it to say something like "They take some for themselves" but honestly, I mostly been dwelling on this for two reasons.

1. I hate mining, fishing, so on... I mean yes, lets take a moment to play the lottery machine to see if I can finally craft this one item that demands 100 resource but getting that 100 feels like I could spend hours on it, and either I don't get it because luck or the game has decided said thing never spawns.

2. That in all honesty, its the least fun activity in the game. Sure I don't dream about sitting at some map tile on survival for hours just to gather resources, but at the same time I know when I am done doing that, odds are I got everything I need to last me, where if I go to the open world, I know its going to be going around, getting frustrated because the mining nodes are invisible again, that the rare fish refuse to spawn even with all conditions meet, or some local spotting me in the distance and deciding to test their luck or bugging something out that makes doing a selected task more painful.

I just feel there has to be an alternative at this point that dosen't ask you to go up to some vender and go "I will buy 20 fish bones off you for 50 platinum" at this point.

[Zakkhar]

55 minutes ago, Solvent_Golem said:

I hate mining, fishing, so on...

There are alternatives.

• For PoE: Hunt Thumpers (Desecrate/Chesekrate works)
• For Deimos: Do Vaults (escort) and Obelisks,
• For Fortuna: Exploiter Orb drops bunch of mining/fishing materials, but I wouldnt advise that over mining/fishing, because this fight is horrid.

[(MOB)drakefrost]

That sounds like an idea, BUT (yes, a big but. But, okay, with only 1 T)

On 6/25/2024 at 11:09 AM, Solvent_Golem said:

Expeditions can only be launched to the open world areas of the game, and can be done from your ship. If the expedition needs help, they will send out an SOS and you would have an hour to respond.

This kills it.

I meant, that’s nice alternatives as an active quest, similar to Excavation mission.

• Pick up an expedition team (fisher (fishing), miner (mining), farmer (looting all surrounding collectibles), Drones (storage)).
  Each member of the team going back to the drone for storing the items they got every one successful attempt.
• Deploy extraction zones once each of them completed their work.
• Deploy enemies trying to hunt the “workers” and the Drone.
  Level increased every waves (or make it similar to Orb Vallis’s Alert level).
  Workers can be revived similar to Railjack crews, but mission failed (and nothing obtained) if the Drone is destroyed.
• Interact with the Drone to switch between Deploy (work) and Call (call all workers and move once there’s no worker carrying resources.
• The longer they stay, the better drop they’ll get.
• Specifically, NO hunter, as Hunter gives immediate affinity.

I meant, the idea worths, if it’s replacing old “boring” activity with a new, more active one.

Simply replacing them with a passive one isn’t good IMO, especially if their obstructions aren’t worth fighting.
Changing Resource Gathering to something more fun is preferable IMO.

Also, as mentioned above, there’s been alternatives to get resources other than normal Resource Gathering, so I don’t think a “lazy based” alternative is good.

[Solvent_Golem]

That could work... and further incurage the player to research better equipment to those they are defending, more resources gathered in a wave, better quality resources, better chance for rare resources, so on.

Further with it being a mission, we could have a party of 4 team up and set up for best results. This might throw out the clan idea for big clan based expeditions.

The last thing I think I will kind of say, when I say "Hunters", I am more thinking they would be equipped with trank guns and extra animal resources might come with it, though I understand the logic behind throwing this out. I myself farm tags by having a heavy range and duration equinox which makes the task super simple and easy.